


The Beginning is Now

by ilyena_sylph, Merfilly



Series: Dooku the Rat [10]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Babies, Multi, Reunions, most everyone lives, sappy ending i tell you, they still lost a few people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-17
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-07-15 15:44:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7228687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyena_sylph/pseuds/ilyena_sylph, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life is hectic, and babies come when they are ready, but plans were made and unfold here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Beginning is Now

"Anakin."

The Knight roused at the sense of urgency as well as the use of his name to see Padmé there, looking drawn and pale, as if she were in pain --

"Padmé?!" He sat up hastily in their shared bed, thankful he had slipped free of the Temple as soon as she said she was finally released from the Senate's long proceedings over Dooku and treating with the Separatists. It had taken so long to get anywhere, and there was still more to do, but the coalition of leaders had seen that tempers had frayed too far, declaring a recess of one ten-day.

"Convenient of the baby to wait until I was out of session, but yes, it's time," she told him, trying to twist herself out of the bed to get into one of the large, concealing robes she had been hiding in through the whole mess. 

Anakin brought his wrist comm up to his lips. "Artoo, skimmer at the pad, now," he ordered, going to her side to get her up and help her. Her stomach was so swollen, and only the distraction with affairs of politics and warfare had kept the gossip to a minimum. 

Now, though, she was having their child, and he had to get her to medical aid and privacy for it.

Thankfully, there was a plan in place, hammered out between Sabé, Captain Rex, and Medic Kix, once Rex had tracked the man down and brought him safely home in that first ten-day back. All Anakin had to do was get her to the barracks, to their own medbay, where Kix was eagerly looking forward to delivering life instead of helping ease the dying away in comfort.

"Don't fret so much," Padmé muttered. "Labor's only just gotten to the point Kix recommended I come to him for, and we aren't that far from the barracks. Especially how you pilot."

Anakin snorted at that, then remembered he really ought to wear more than his sleep leggings. "We'll take good care of you, Padmé, and our baby… or babies, if I'm right."

"If it really is babies, you are convincing Ahsoka to actually move in here," Padmé growled. 

"I'd like that," Anakin admitted, before they were on their way to the skimmer, and to having their child.

++++

"Certain of this, you are?" Yoda asked in a firm voice.

"Of all your Jedi, who is more enduring? If my sentence is to be here, in the Temple, until I die, then I choose to open this bond with one I can trust, even now," Dooku told him. 

Yoda made a considering noise, then made a gesture for his former padawan to settle on the mat beside him. "More than a training bond, this is. Always aware, lives joined, they will be."

"Then, my ancient Master, am I not borrowing your longevity by choosing you as my prison warden?" Dooku asked slyly, and Yoda could not help but smile in his own fashion. Many wrongs had been done, and the darkness still shrouded his one-time apprentice, but Yoda would find a way to turn the evil to better purposes for future generations.

Keeping Dooku close would also help them with the problem of Anakin Skywalker. If the Knight had been so close to Falling before, even if Obi-Wan was adamant the danger was past, maybe Dooku could warn of the signs should that path call again. Yoda placed faith in Obi-Wan, and the future before them was clearing, but Anakin Skywalker would always be too powerful for Yoda to fully be without concern about him.

++++

Rex had been busy. Between rooting out the corruption in the Coruscant Guard, arranging to keep the Senator safe, and finding stray members of the 501st, he really hadn't stopped moving since he got back.

So he hadn't actually heard or seen that his Commander was back.

Not that she was his Commander.

Or, as he privately told himself as he approached the medbay, that she'd even care to be reminded of the past. He could see all the tension coiled in her body, the way the central headtail was so rigid from where he could see her. She was standing, stiff as anything -- taller, he noticed -- at the bedside of the Senator.

Not a single member of the press had seen that trip here in the pre-dawn hours, and no one would see when Kix released her and the babies either. Rex had made it his life goal to protect her, so that his General could breathe easier. They were already discussing the feasibility of Rex retiring and accepting a new position within her security staff.

Maybe they didn't need him, not if the General had found and recruited Ahsoka.

Squaring his own shoulders, trying to not be terribly obtrusive, Rex walked in to do the obligatory congratulations Kix had said was normal for these things.

"Rex! There's a boy and a girl!" Anakin said in a sense of absolute wonder, despite it having been at least two hours since the actual birth. His announcement, though, had Ahsoka turning, and for a moment, Rex saw her lekku brighten… for just that moment. And then his friend, the girl he'd help train into one of the best kriffing warriors, dampened and shut down every physical tell-tale he'd learned about her.

"Ani, you can't expect everyone to be so boisterous!" Padmé scolded him, before smiling tiredly at the Captain. "Hello, Rex."

"General; Senator." His eyes went to the too-still Togruta. "Ma'am," he said, and even he knew his voice had shifted some as he settled on that to address her. Her eyes came to his face, and she gave him a quiet, almost sad smile.

Smiles weren't meant to be sad, especially not on her.

"Hi, Rex," she said, before pointedly looking back at the babies swaddled next to their mother. 

/Kriff, but … I thought we were friends. What is wrong with her, why -- / He was knocked out of his questioning by Anakin frowning as he regarded Ahsoka in turn. So the General wasn't sure about her either? 

Well, Rex would just do his duty; it always got him by.

"Rex, do you want to hold one of them?" Anakin asked, more to distract them all from the odd tension in the air.

"Me, sir? Beg your pardon, sir, but kriff no! It's tiny and fragile and looks like it's not even supposed to be out of, er, well, born yet," Rex said, amending the clone terminology for being created swiftly.

That made the Senator laugh, before she reached out to catch his hand. "You don't have to hold them right now, but if you're seriously considering the offer to join my household, it might be needed in the future."

"That will be in the future, when they both have a bit more mass and muscle," Rex said fervently, even as she confirmed the offer. Yet, what was Ahsoka going to be doing?

The General, with uncanny timing, filled that in. "With you for security, and Ahsoka for Force training, the twins will be very safe," he said, in a tone of complete satisfaction.

Rex glanced to Ahsoka, who looked as if Anakin had just shocked ten years off her life.

"Me, Skyguy?" she squeaked.

"Ani, you were supposed to ask her last week!" Padmé scolded.

Rex barely noticed, because he was already seeing the tension melt in his Commander… no, his friend. Maybe she'd eventually talk to him about it, but he would easily wager she'd been feeling adrift, and that was never a good thing for one of the _Vod'e_.

Anyone who didn't think Ahsoka Tano was one of them had never seen her in the field, right alongside them.

++++

"With so many worlds overthrowing their droid captors, and the surrenders, this war is all but done," Obi-Wan said, wearily resting back to back with Cody in yet another tent. "Thought about your future? I know the offers from various worlds have been pouring in at other units."

Cody considered that, because he'd heard those offers. A lot of the worlds they'd seen fighting on, that had lost population, were requesting the clones who out-processed to consider settling on them. They had space, needed hard workers, and were often grateful to the men.

Ryloth, in particular, had sent an offer through Syndulla himself, to take any man willing to brave their world and help raise the many orphans.

He wondered if Boil would take up that offer, or if losing Waxer had made it harder for the man to reach back out to the child they both had loved.

"What are you going to do?" Cody countered, feeling too adrift to answer the question. He loved his men, respected them, but the past three years had reoriented his attachments in one major direction.

Obi-Wan tipped his head back against Cody's, closing his eyes. "Try to help the Order adapt to peace again, keeping the lessons we learned. I am needed there, as a bridge between the time-honored traditions, and the ways we have learned to survive what the war has done to us."

Cody swallowed hard, hearing the commitment and determination in those words. His General was very much a Jedi, and the Order was his family. There really wasn't room for -- 

"It would be far easier to do, if my right hand stayed at my side," Obi-Wan said. "Yet, I cannot impose. I need you to live your life far more than I need to keep you close."

Cody's heart gave a worrying thump of strange feelings, before he could answer.

"Funny, sir, that living my life only sounds worthwhile if I can stay close to the man I need to keep safe," he told his General.

Obi-Wan smiled, small and faint. Maybe this attachment would last. Maybe, choosing a soldier as skilled as Cody was, he might not bury this one. 

And maybe there was just no more choice to this one than there had been with the ones he'd lost.

+++++

Anakin was standing on the balcony, his wife and children sleeping for the moment. His eyes fell on the scene of the landing pad, where his Captain, now a private security officer, and his former padawan had walked to have privacy.

Ahsoka was slowly working past the feelings of having betrayed them all by leaving, and Rex was growing into his life as a free man, so they were going to be fine. Anakin could quit worrying over them, as they all learned how to live with one another.

He was still a Jedi; Obi-Wan had insisted, and it was Obi-Wan who more and more Jedi were listening to these days. It made Anakin feel safer, knowing his Master was balancing the Code out, that the younglings would grow up with more options to their lives. His own twins were not going to go that route, but there were other avenues.

He looked up to the sky, itching to go fly soon, to feel that freedom, but it was not overwhelming. No, nothing really overwhelmed him now, outside of his role as a father and a husband. And that was the good kind of emotional overload.

He knew his eyes were finding the place the man he'd once called friend had died. He knew it, and yet he felt no anger, nothing but peace with how it had all come down. One different move in that fight, one where Dooku died, and Palpatine lived, and the life he knew now could have been nothing but a dream.

He would never be free of his hot temper, but he could hold it in check now. He had reason to; it made Dooku even more sour to realize he absolutely could not goad Anakin to a flare of it. He had the twins to bring him in check.

He had Padmé, his angel, and the Order had to leave him alone on that too.

All in all, it felt like an impossible dream that he was living. Eventually, something would happen… but he knew he could reach out and every single _vod_ would be there to help save them all over again, grateful to be free of the army and the chip, yet willing to defend their new rights.

Anakin turned to go back inside, ready to spend the night feeding the twins and sleeping with them curled up in his arms.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, one and all, for the support this series has received.


End file.
